If Google's biggest fear is a more advanced search technology, Vivisimo is only too willing to make that fear a reality. The startup launched its free consumer search, Clusty, September 30.
“The success of today’s search technology has left users awash in information,” Vivisimo chief executive Raul Valdes-Perez, one of three former Carnegie Mellon University veterans who created the concept, said announcing the launch. “The net result is that users cannot or will not wade through all of the options a search engine offers up. The fast and friendly Clusty.com puts users back in control and ensures that they truly know the full extent of resources that are available to them in the vast online world. Clusty also helps them zero in on what they were looking for and, often, leads them to discover new things along the way.”
Some observers believe Clusty is a prime example of how clustering search results can eliminate much of the confusion stirred when incumbent search engines return oversized lists – and, that clustering just might be better than looking at pages based on Google's famed page ranking system.
"As databases get larger, trying to pull the proverbial needle out of the haystack gets tougher and tougher," SearchEngineWatch editor Gary Price told The New York Times. "Here, you're getting a bit of extra help."
Based on results from Yahoo's Overture engine, Clusty, much like the name suggests, clusters results into categories for easier sorting. If you punch in "Jenna Jameson," for example, you get a breakdown of results in the left-hand column of the results page showing categories "porn, star," "Jenna Jameson Pics," "DVDs," "Videos," "Nude, Pictures," "Galleries," "Compare Products," "Club" (12 results, numbers two and three of which lead to ClubJenna.com), "Jenna Jameson Movies," and "Superstar, Adult," listed in descending order according to the number of results.
Vivisimo said they built Clusty based on the very popular response they got from a demo search box on Vivisimo's corporate Website. As rolled out officially, Clusty looks as simple as Google on its home page, but above the search box are tab images like those on manila file folders; a tab each for Web, news, images, shopping, encyclopedia, gossip, and user customizing.
That customizing tab, Vivismo said, "lets users customize Clusty to suit their unique requirements. Visitors can choose the tabs to display from a list or create their own tabs by selecting information sources to search. Whether they want to track sports news, health related information or hobby sites, users can get fast and easy access to the information they care about, organized into clustered folders."
